Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[apostrophe]

re: "What's the difference between 'safety' and 'little to no side effects'?"

The difference between being redundant or simply repeating yourself? :)

There are some drugs that are inherently unsafe in their primary intended mode of action. For example, people are inundated with all kinds of microbes as a matter of daily living. Now a drug designed to suppress the immune system for, say, organ transplant, could easily cause you to die from an infection. Doctors will administer it taking an educated guess that they will be able to use other drugs, some still-effective antibiotic against bacteria or antiviral against a virus to keep the first drug from killing you. Knocking out the immune system is dangerous, not safe, but that's not a side effect, that's its designed purpose.

Let's see, giving a blood thinner to prevent clotting to dissolve a blood clot. Hope the patient doesn't sneeze and bleed out through their nose or from a minor cut, or internally. Primary function unsafe, not a side effect.

"No side effects" is pretty super.

"Little side effects", temporary, inconsequential, pretty good, remarkable, worthy of remark.

As opposed to side effects that are safe in terms of likelyhood of killing you or causing serious harm (e.g. organ damage from cancer drug) but still make you miserable and/or disfunctional. Those would be bad or big, major side effects. A matter of degree.

“Our prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Our drugs kill around 200,000 people in America every year, and half of these people die while they do what their doctors told them—so they die because of the side-effects,” said Dr. Gotzsche in his recent interview. “The other half die because of errors—and it’s often the doctors that make the errors because any drug may come with 20, 30 or 40 warnings, contraindications, precautions…and then the patients die.”

Let's see, number from a somewhat over-the-top website I just found, not counting "Iatrogenic deaths" or chemotherapy. Chemo drugs aren't broken down into whether due to side effects or being inherently unsafe. I guess both. They are, basically, poisons.

"Adverse drug reactions" : 1,763,953 (in the U.S.) since Jan. 1, 2000

So, roughly, (1,763,953 / 16) = 110,247 side effect deaths per year. (and counting)

Figuring half of the chemo and whatnot, 200,000 would seem to be pretty credible...

http://pharmadeathclock.com/